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We were warned. Who can deny but the president general will be a king to all intents and purposes, and one of the most dangerous kind too; a king elected to command a standing army…. The President- general, who is to be our king after this government is established, is vested with powers exceeding those of the most despotic monarch we know of in modern times…. I challenge the politicians of the whole continent to find in any period of history a monarch more absolute….

That was written by Benjamin Workman under the penname Philadelphiensis, one of the Anti-Federalists who warned in 1787-88 that the proposed Constitution would centralize power to an appalling degree, particularly in the executive branch.

Now heres President Barack Obama defending his unilateral military intervention in the civil war raging in Libya (emphasis added):

Confronted by this brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean. European allies declared their willingness to commit resources to stop the killing…. [At] my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass a historic resolution that authorized a no-fly zone to stop the regimes attacks from the air, and further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people…. We knew that if we wanted if we waited one more day Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world…. I refused to let that happen. And so nine days ago, after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress, I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973…. [As] President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action…. Of course, there is no question that Libya and the world would be better off with Qaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal…. The task that I assigned our forces to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger, and to establish a no-fly zone carries with it a UN mandate and international support.

You see no reference to a congressional declaration of war or the Constitution. Philadelphiensis and his compatriots would not have been surprised. They saw early on that it wouldnt take much for a president to become an emperor.

Obama continued: Ive made it clear that I will never hesitate to use our military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests…. But let us also remember that for generations, we have done the hard work of protecting our own people, as well as millions around the globe. We have done so because we know that our own future is safer, our own future is brighter, if more of mankind can live with the bright light of freedom and dignity (emphasis added).

There in a nutshell is the imperial premise: Our future depends on the condition of the rest of mankind. Therefore, the president may bomb or invade anywhere he likes as long as he believes intervention is feasible. And as long as he can get the U.S.-dominated NATO and UN Security Council on board. (NATO, incidentally, was never established for such a purpose.) Obamas touted coalition is cold comfort to those who realize that freedom and fiscal moderation at home are jeopardized by a government run amok in the world.

Once upon a time, people actually believed that a president could not constitutionally commit troops abroad without a declaration of war by Congress. With some exceptions, that belief held presidents in check for a while. But it passed away sometime after 1942, and since then presidents have gone to war big-time and small whenever they damn well pleased. Congress has simply been too timid to assert itself against imperial presidents. After the undeclared Vietnam war disaster, a War Powers Resolution was passed in an attempt to limit future presidents, but it was a pale substitute for the war-declaration requirement and besides, cowardly Congresses have never pushed to enforce the resolution.

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Sheldon Richman is former vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation and editor of FFF's monthly journal, Future of Freedom. For 15 years he was editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York. He is the author of FFF's award-winning book Separating School & State: How to Liberate America's Families; Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax; and Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State.
Calling for the abolition, not the reform, of public schooling. Separating School & State has become a landmark book in both libertarian and educational circles. In his column in the Financial Times, Michael Prowse wrote: "I recommend a subversive tract, Separating School & State by Sheldon Richman of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank... . I also think that Mr. Richman is right to fear that state education undermines personal responsibility..."
Sheldon's articles on economic policy, education, civil liberties, American history, foreign policy, and the Middle East have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Washington Times, The American Conservative, Insight, Cato Policy Report, Journal of Economic Development, The Freeman, The World & I, Reason, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Liberty magazine, and other publications. He is a contributor to the The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
A former newspaper reporter and senior editor at the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies, Sheldon is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia. He blogs at Free Association. Send him e-mail.

Reading List

Prepared by Richard M. Ebeling

Austrian economics is a distinctive approach to the discipline of economics that analyzes market forces without ever losing sight of the logic of individual human action. Two of the major Austrian economists in the 20th century have been Friedrich A. Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Ludwig von Mises. Posted below is an Austrian Economics reading list prepared by Richard M. Ebeling, economics professor at Northwood University in Midland and former president of the Foundation for Economic Education and vice president of academic affairs at FFF.